ABQJOURNAL OPINION/GUEST_COLUMNS: Can We Support Everyone Counted?

Friday, December 31, 2010

Can We Support Everyone Counted?

By Kathleene Parker
Rio Rancho author
          The first census, in 1790, counted our numbers, then about 4 million. With the release of the current census, we hear about how we are becoming older or more diverse, but we get no discussion of the stunning fact that our nation is one of three global population supergiants and the world's fourth-fastest growing nation!
        We also get no discussion of whether that is good, considering the Great Recession, boom growth's part in our economic woes and that the Southwest — our fastest-growing region — is in a water crisis of potentially catastrophic implications and proportions.
        Just three nations — China, India and the United States — have populations over 300 million.
        That our place there is not being acknowledged is irresponsible considering the implications to the planet and the impact to our individual lives: gridlock on Paseo del Norte, health-care overwhelmed, education strained to breaking and states buckling under the debt for staggering amounts of new growth-required infrastructure.
        Bangladesh's overpopulation is a huge problem for Bangladesh but of little consequence to the world, except as a breeding ground for terrorism. But the population supergiants' overpopulation — with their huge resource consumption and environmental impact — is a problem for the world.
        Census hoopla will likely not mention that the United States in 2006 reached a number that a Nixon-era presidential commission warned we should never reach, 300 million. Just four years later we hover at 310 million, a nagging reminder of an approaching 450 million by 2050 or a possible China-like one billion late century!
        Big Media headline a "falling" birth rate. Wrong!
        True, each woman has fewer babies, an average of 2.2, but more women than ever are having babies. Births in 2007 actually exceeded the 1957 peak of the Baby Boom. One in 12 was to an illegal border crosser.
        And, there is immigration.
        Open-border apologists say we are "a nation of immigrants," but we are also a nation that tightly limited immigration — until recently.
        Between 1860 and 1920, we admitted fewer total than between 2000 and 2006! During the Great Depression, immigration was held below 10,000 a year. During the Great Recession, at 700,000 a year, legal immigration alone exceeds the previous high, the Great Wave of 1880 to 1919 when a "mere" 600,000 were admitted annually — until the American people demanded cuts to 200,000 a year.
        Today, 1.2 million — legal and illegal — arrive, and no, there is not room for more.
        People can survive like sardines in a can. Population is limited by resources.
        We are at the brink of becoming a net importer of food and could become as beholden for food as we are for energy.
        And water shortages, especially in the American Southwest, put us at the brink of a precipice.
        The Colorado — the region's primary water source — was overallocated in the 1920s when 16.4 million acre feet were apportioned from a river that holds closer to 13.5 million. Add an exploding population, prolonged drought and cautions by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and others that the region is returning to a far drier norm and Lake Mead, the nation's largest reservoir, could run dry by 2021.
        Little wonder that Las Vegas, Nev., which gets 90 percent of its water from the Colorado, is building a new lake-bottom intake to draw water until the last bitter drop!
        But that might be the least of our problems.
        The drought emergency will begin a new era of shortages, rationing and required water-use cutbacks to Colorado River states. Junior water rights holders like New Mexico could quickly play second fiddle to the political clout of California. San Juan-Chama water — a new lifeblood to Albuquerque and Santa Fe and diverted from the Colorado — might be imperiled or simply not exist.
        Continuing long-term shortages — in addition to also threatening still drought-strained Lake Powell, the nation's second-largest reservoir, could have catastrophic implications to the economy and perhaps even political stability of a Southwest today holding 60 million people — a number likely to double by mid-century.
        Is it wise, therefore, for politicians to promote growth in our arid region?
        Aren't we overdue for an honest discussion about the numbers whether we can or should continue our current population explosion?
        Kathleen Parker authored "Population, Immigration, and the Drying of the American Southwest" for the Center for Immigration Studies, www.cis.org.

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